Blog

Blurb: Nick is a young, aspiring artist. Camille is his favorite barista at the Happy Hermit café. When Camille's engorged breasts start leaking during her shift, he knows that someone will have to clean her up - and it might as well be him.

He had been sitting in a corner booth of the Happy Hermit, one of those hipster coffee cafés that everyone loved to hate – including him. It was overpriced and overflowing with hack writers and scribblers calling themselves artists, and if that wasn’t bad enough, if a server caught you uploading a photo of your food with a crappy filter on it, you’d get a free espresso.

Cleaning up Camille is the story of Nick, the guy chilling in this hipster cafe, and Camille, a barista that is way too cute and innocent for it. Nick has secretly been admiring Camille's newfound boobage when an accident happens that changes their relationship.

“There you go,” she announced triumphantly. “One maple vanilla spiced latte for Mr. Ford.” She spun the can like a cowboy in a spaghetti Western and shoved it into her apron with a playful wink.

Camille is a basic girl and Nick is a basic guy, but their interactions in this story are surprisingly sweet. They have playful banter and genuinely seem to enjoy each other's presence. It almost feels like they are those best friends that everyone assumes are dating.

Camille was clearly upset and humiliated, and the sounds of her quiet weeping nearly drove him to tears along with her.

Not only that, but Nick is something more than a raging hard on! He actually cares about Camille. In the quote above you can really see that he has a lot of empathy for her situation, which is pretty endearing.

“It’s not all that weird. It’ll give us something to laugh about later when—” “Holy shit, Nick!” Camille yelped, her eyes widening. Nick looked down and realized that she was staring at the front of his jeans. “You’re hard!”

That's all great and sweet until we get to the sexy. I'm sorry to say that it was just plain confusing sometimes. Why is Camille (who just had a baby and obviously isn't a virgin) pointing at Nick's crotch like she's never seen an erection before? Does that really warrant a yelp. Maybe if he was so gigantic his pants were coming apart, but this seems like a pretty run-of-the mill erection here.

“That’s my girl!” Nick praised, grabbing a handful of the fabric and giving a sharp tug. The strappy little pair ripped away, leaving her bare-assed in front of him. She yelped in surprise and he stuffed them in her mouth, turning her to face him and looking down into her wide brown eyes.

Then there are scenes like this that make me feel like I'm in another story. After all that sweet insecurity, where did this come from? First time sex with a sensitive artist guy and he rips off your panties and stuffs them in your mouth? I'm into BDSM, so normally I'd probably find this pretty hot, but here it's just confusing.

He was soon not only covered in the milk from her tits, but the milk from her pussy too, an earthy aroma that reminded him of red wine and went to his head just as easily.

There are also a few moments in the text that suffer from overwriting. I know red wine is a nice image, but it really doesn't make sense here. Well, unless Camille has some really special breast milk.

“I knew you’d like it,” she said in between animalistic panting. “I’ve been putting it in your coffee for weeks.”

On the other hand, it's moments like these that make me smile. It's a cute trick that Camille has pulled on Nick and gives her a little spunk. Plus it makes Nick seem less like a weird stalker, which is always a plus. Unless that's the kink you're writing.

“You… are on the pill, right?” he asked at last, wincing at how terribly unromantic that sounded. Camille chuckled and shook her head, but before Nick could have a coronary, she added: “An IUD.”

Finally, a shoutout for mentioning IUDs in erotica. I think I've never seen that before and it literally made me laugh out loud. Remember kids, IUDs are 99% effective at preventing pregnancy, but will not stop dudes at cafes from milking your boobs.

Details

Plot : ★★★☆☆

Characters: ★★★☆☆

Warnings: Milk! All over the place! In a grimy hipster cafe!

Pros

+Super sweet story about cute characters
+ IUDs!

Cons

+Really not enough sizzle for me
+Not enough romance to make up for the sizzle

Why You Should Buy It

If you want a mostly sweet story about lots of milk gushing between two cafe denizens, this is the story for you. If you just love lactation, it has the milk and the sex you desire.

About the Author:Nora Nix is a young author with a passion for passion. She enjoys love stories just as much as she enjoys lust stories and writes both. Other genres that interest her include fantasy, science fiction, dystopian worlds, post-apocalyptic epics, and good old adventure tales.

Blurb: Eve, a young plus size American living in Paris, falls under the spell of a fellow lawyer on her way to Miami and discovers how hot a tropical Christmas Eve can get.

Review:
This is the story of a BBW lawyer finding her man. After successfully closing a case, she heads to Miami. Lucky for her, the handsome stranger she spotted in Paris is seated right next to her on the plane. When they touch down, things get hot and heavy pretty fast.
I have to say that I wanted to like this. Eve doesn't seem stupid, she's good at her job, and its a high stakes one. Strong female leads always make me happy. But there is so much else going on here that I just was never able to get into the story.

She had always loved bald men. It had started when, as a child, she had fallen in love with Yull Bryner in The "King and I. " Her fascination for hairless heads never vanished.

But before I get into that, I have to say that there were several moments in this book that were absolutely hilarious. I can't tell if that was Lady O's intention or not, but I was cracking up. Of course, I have a special love for Yull Bryner, so it might just be tickeling a very specific funny bone.

“Well we just have to find a way,” answered a deep rich mature male voice. “Annabella wants to open a few stores in France next year: she may have found a place in Paris and one in Saint Tropez. Both stores are to open in the spring and she needs to be able to use her name on her collections. It is no coincidence that this guy filed for the ‘Annabella G’ trademark after he returned from a Miami trip. He plans to get a free ride on our client’s name. To win this case we have to find a way to convince the French judge that French consumers already know this brand[, that they have heard of Annabella, not only the woman but [...]

That is a pretty large part of why I couldn't love this book. The first half or two thirds of Christmas Eve is mostly Eve and the other characters talking about lawyer things. I know she's a lawyer and everything, but it is mostly unrelated to the plot. I don't care about the nitty gritty behind international trademarks. This is an erotic romance. I care about the romance and the sex.

Unfortunately,that's not all. There are frequent typos, the dialogue is unbelievable, and everyone speaks in giant blocks of paragraphs. It often feels rambling, disjointed, and pretty confusing to read. We also get too much of an education in Florida landmarks along the way.

He was still supporting her as she came again listening to his breathing get more labored as he reached his final release. They were catching their breath in that position oblivious to the rest of the word when there was a discreet knock on the door. "Room service. I’ll leave the cart by the door." They both giggled softly. "You think he’s been standing by the door waiting for us to finish?"

Then there is the sex. There is almost none of it, and when it does happen, it's lackluster. The quote above is basically an entire sex act. It was over so quickly that I was shocked. Sure, it's one in a series of sexual moments the main characters share when they finally get together, but they are all as brief as this one.

Besides the brevity, the sex scenes have no sizzle. That might be in part because it was hard to feel the romance in this erotic romance. Why does Eve like Guillaume so much? What is the chemistry between them? I'm not sure and I never felt it. So by the end I was anxious for the sex because I was bored, not because I desperately wanted them to get together.

Overall, I think Christmas Eve might have had some promise, but several things worked to bring it down.

Why You Should Buy It
If you have been looking for an erotic romance that's pretty chaste and will teach you all you need to know about being a lawyer.

About the Author:
Lady O writes romance with a touch of spice.
Because it's borderline erotica, very few of her friends know about it.
She's a native New Yorker and proof that you can take the woman out of the city but never the city out of the woman.
She's been engaged not to be married to a French man for thirty years.
Her two kids do not read what she writes but wish for a best seller so she can treat him to a new saxophone and her to a custom made Hermes saddle.

Today's review is a little different. I'll be reviewing Best Sex Writing 2013, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel as part of a blog tour promoting the book. The book is a collection of, as it says on the label, the best writing on sex this year. It ranges from discussing child prostitution, to religion and virginity, all the way to film bombshells.

It's hard to say something cohesive about so many topics, so I'll just give a bit of my overall views and then share a few thoughts on each article.

BSW13 had my brain working hard. The articles are tough, well written, and educational. I felt like I was getting a crash course in the current issues surrounding sexuality today, and history that paved the way for current liberties. A lot of the issues seemed to involve the normalization of different sexualities, how pioneers tried to lead the way, and the ambiguity that still exists between the unspoken lines of human sexually.

That probably sounds like a lot of fluff, but what I'm trying to say is read it, you'll learn something!

Even as I recorded with my charcoal or crayon the halo of untrimmed pubic bush and the flesh-braid of mystery that it haloed, I attained a total non-purchase on those bodies as objects of desire. The palace of lust was a site under construction—that’s what I was off doing at night or afternoons, fantasizing about girls I knew who’d never even show me their knees.

This is a great and funny way to start off the collection. Lethem explores his childhood sketching nude models and how his understanding of and desire for the female body was influenced by this early introduction.

Can a Better Vibrator Inspire an Age of Great American Sex? • Andy Issacson

Imboden was inspired. “As soon as I saw past the fact that in front of me happened to be two penises fused together at the base, I realized that I was looking at the only category of consumer product that had yet to be touched by design,” Imboden said. “It’s as if the only food that had been available was in the candy aisle, like Dum Dums and Twizzlers, where it’s really just about a marketing concept and a quick rush and very little emphasis on nourishment and real enjoyment. The category had been isolated by the taboo that surrounded it. I figured, I can transcend that.

Thank goodness for JimmyJane! I was lucky enough that my first sex toy was a super fancy, new generation, luxe vibrator, but this piece helped me to see what life was like before well designed toys. Could the normalization of sex toys lead to a sexual Nirvana in America? I'm not sure, but having nicely designed things has taken masturbation out of the shadows.

Also, now would be a good time to mention Dildology, since the article touches on the unregulated and frankly dangerous materials used in most sex toys.

Sex by Numbers • Rachel Swan

In fact, there are two main obstacles facing the polyamory movement. One is that, like it or not, we’re a morality-obsessed culture, and in many ways we’re still a doctrinal culture. A 2009 Gallup poll showed that 92 percent of Americans think that having an extramarital affair is morally wrong. That’s about twice as many as those who condemn gay and lesbian relationships, and three times as many as those who oppose the death penalty. Which is to say that as a culture, we’re intractably wedded to the idea of a solid matrimonial bond. We’re more amenable to the idea of legally killing someone than the idea of wrecking a marriage.

Dan Savage of Savage Love fame has brought polyamory into the limelight recently, and this piece touches on the movement's struggle for acceptance. My one qualm was with the quote above. Even though Swan makes a distinction between polyamory and cheating later, this seems to imply that because Americans hate cheating, they will hate polyamory since they are similar. But I guess the bigger problem is how to make it clear to the general population that polyamory is not the same as cheating, and that it's (optimally) totally consensual.

Very Legal: Sex and Love in Retirement • Alex MorrIs

All of which takes the pressure off; no one here is burdened with finding the loves of their lives. The cafeteria’s complex pecking order may recall high school, but relationships don’t have nearly the same all-consuming nature as when residents were younger. Of those now dating, only Henrietta and Herb have moved in together, despite the economic advantages of double occupancy. For the most part, people don’t feel the need to alter their lives substantially. “I want a little peace in my life for the first time in seventy years,” Roosevelt tells me. “I want my space, and I want freedom. And I finally got it.

This is the cutest thing in the world. I know lots of people want to gag when they think of older people having sex, but Grandma wants to get her sexing on too. It also brought up differences in relationships later in life that I simply hadn't thought about, like people just being tired of drama. I would be too!

Notes from a Unicorn • Seth Fischer

I just couldn’t come. I just couldn’t. He was getting tired and starting to look around but he didn’t stop, thank god, because it would have ruined it, because I was right on the edge. Right there. So I did what no one admits to their lovers they do but that everyone does: I closed my eyes and let my mind wander to other people. I thought about men. I was sitting there forcing myself to think about men, only men, men men men men men men, and then it slipped in there, like when someone says don’t think about rhubarb pie and you think about rhubarb pie. I thought, for a second, about Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” because I’d watched an episode earlier that day. Then I fucking erupted.

I think a lot of bi people (myself included) might recognize a lot of their sexual journeys in this piece. Fischer puts the reluctance of many LGBTQ people to accept that "B" into pretty simple terms that makes the problem easy to understand. It's just not good branding. It's too complicated. But by the end, he revels in that complexity.

Rest Stop Confidential • Conner HabIb

The new ways that men meet—endlessly staring into phones, searching on hookup apps like Grindr or sites like Manhunt—haven’t changed the fact that we’re still having sex at rest areas, because they offer something different. For the man who is unsure of his sexuality, or unsure of how to tell others about it, for the man who has a family but feels new desires (or old, hidden ones) unfolding inside of him, the website and the phone apps are just too certain of themselves. They’re for gay men who want to have gay sex. Sex at the rest area, instead, abolishes identity; there’s a sort of freedom there to not be anything—instead, men just meet other men there; men who want the same sort of freedom.

The elegiac, dreamy, and poetic feeling of this piece by Habib was a definite tone change, but a welcome one. I never knew about these illicit meetings at rest stops, but he makes it sound like an entirely different world.

When on Fire Island... A Polyamorous Disaster • Nicholas Garnett

Chipper was right. Rachael and I returned home, where our sleep-and-food-deprived bodies finally teamed up with our ravaged nervous systems and our bruised egos to let us have it, right in the old cerebellum. The whole damn country seemed to join us in a spectacular crash, as markets collapsed and planes smashed into buildings. Some of our friends ended up sick, others in rehab. It had been one hell of a party, but the party was over.

So yeah, polyamory doesn't always turn out okay. Sometimes it turns out horribly. Like this time.

Cherry Picking • JulIa Serano

My first supposed sexual peak came when I was eighteen. It was my first year of college and I didn’t really have any freshman sexual experiences to speak of. Some years are just like that but don’t feel bad for me, I made up for it by having a second sexual peak as a woman at the age of thirty-five.

What I loved about this piece was that it didn't focus on Julia's physical transformation. That was almost secondary to her journey of begin accepted societally and emotionally as the woman she always felt she was.

Holy Fuck:The Fourth-and-Long Virgin • Jon PressIck

No. He should keep on doing what he’s doing. So much work, so much activism, so many lives have gone into creating sex-positive culture that we cannot undo all of that by being hypocrites. And telling Tim Tebow he shouldn’t be a virgin, he shouldn’t wait until marriage, and he shouldn’t have religious beliefs creates a sex-negative situation for him. Nobody is telling him to fuck because he wants to and it feels nice. No, Tim Tebow is being told to fuck because he’s supposed to want that. In doing so, we’re giving everyone the right to tell other people “You shouldn’t be a slut,” “You shouldn’t have sex before marriage,” “You should wait for the right person.”

I am the first person to admit that I don't know anything about sports, especially American football. I've heard the controversy over Tim Tebow, but never really paid it any attention. But the quote above put the whole thing in a different light: The Tebow story isn't just frivolous news bait, it says something about how far we have actually come in our society to being truly sex-positive a.k.a. accepting all sexualities, including the choice not to have sex.

It was fascinating, because it felt entirely different than the usual sensual act. Here was a man over six feet tall who probably weighed close to two hundred pounds, yet he seemed to have shrunk as he curled himself up against me (I’m around five-foot-three and one hundred and fifty pounds). He felt smaller as he “nursed.” He was showing me his vulnerability, transforming into someone else, which made me want to offer up a different side of myself in return. And that was hot.

I didn't "get" age play before this piece. I'm not big into diapers, you know? But Bussel explains the power play, vulnerability, transformation, and nurturing that can be involved, and I have to admit that it does sound kind of hot.

Dear John • LorI Selke

I was booking space for an upcoming party. All I needed to know were the house rules, the rental rates and could we bring some mattresses in to increase the horizontal space? And the owners looked at me kind of funny, and then started talking to me in a way that made me realize that they thought I wasn’t really kinky at all, because who combines sex with spanking and bondage? It must mean I wasn’t serious about what I was doing and needed some remedial lectures in safer sex, hygiene, and kink, all at once. This was not cool. We’d known each other for so long. How could you treat me this condescendingly, just because of my orgasms?

Selke's "Dear John" letter to the leather community is funny, thoughtful, and enlightening. She struggles with the power dynamics that seem to have taken over the culture, perpetuating traditional subservient female gender roles. It was a particularly interesting read for me, since I'm trying to work though these issues in my erotica as well.

Sex by Any Other Name • InsIya AnsarI

At first, my heart wasn’t in the decision, and the fact that I wasn’t holding anything back scared me a bit. This anxiety begat paranoia. How could the man really love me and at the same time pressure me to have sex when I felt so ambivalent about it? Was this my pattern: becoming infatuated with selfish men who would do me wrong? I dizzied myself with these thoughts, and gave of myself tentatively. Moreover, the sex was often disappointing. So it might sound delusional when I say that I considered our intimacy over the next five years to be redemptive. But finally confronting the ambiguity in my sex life allowed me to be more accepting of all my purported contradictions. And when the obsession with my sexual status fell away, my religious identity came into relief. I focused on maintaining the practices that are core to my spirituality and my connection to God.

Yes! I was glad to see a discussion of a person's struggle with virginity in this collection. I only would have been happier if there were also a piece about asexuality in here as well.

Euphoria and agony are next-door neighbors—you can’t break that paradoxical connection. And if you are not willing to tolerate contradictions and paradoxes, human behavior will never make much sense to you.

If you are into BDSM in any way, you should read this. It's like a crash course in sadism, masochism, dominance, submission, endorphins, and all manner of stuff. Plus, it's pretty funny.

Submissive:A Personal Manifesto • Madison Young

In a fantasy world, Sir and I would exist 24/7 in an erotically charged nonstop BDSM scene. But this is reality—and thank goodness it is! It would be boring and not nearly as special to me if submission were a constant. It is difficult to fully appreciate the calm without a healthy amount of chaos. Besides, Sir and I lead very hectic lives, and between work and our newborn baby girl, it’s not possible for us to maintain that dynamic of our relationship on a 24/7 basis.

Did I mention that some of these pieces are pretty hot? Young explores how she and her husband live out their dominant and subservient roles in everyday life while balancing work , sexuality, and a baby. It's a nice look into how D/s roles work outside of fantasy sex shows.

Ghosts: All My Men Are Dead • Carol Queen

You should have felt how hot to the touch a naked cock could be when there was no sure way to keep someone alive if they got AIDS from the load that cock shot. What it meant to negotiate to be fluid-bonded when that bond had come to promise more than any ring: naked-cock sex was now coded to mean life or death, like the words the straight people said when they got married, but everyone knows they can get out of that if they want to.

While Habib was elegiac, Queen's piece is actually an elegy to all the men she knew and loved that were killed by HIV and AIDS. It really makes it seem like they came from an amazing and wonderful bygone era that was full of sex and love. One that will never happen again.

Happy Hookers • MelIssa GIra Grant

The anxiety is that sex work may be legitimate after all. In a sense, the prohibitionists are correct: people who might have never gotten into the sex trade before can and are. Fighting what they call “the normalizing of prostitution” is the focus of anti–sex work feminists. In this view, one happy hooker is a threat to all women everywhere.

Grant basically asks and explores the question of how we deal with prostitution when hookers are not just victims.

Baird, now eighty years old, still lectures about reproductive justice. He told Church & State that he was at first reluctant to challenge the Massachusetts law. “My initial reaction when I saw the penalty,” he recalls, “was, ‘I have four kids. I can’t afford to be in prison for ten years.’” Baird changed his mind after students pleaded with him to come. “I thought of a young woman I once saw in a hospital who died from an illegal abortion,” Baird said. “I was so absolutely outraged that a fellow human being was dying in front of me because she could not legally have birth control.

Kids today are lucky. I'm lucky! I didn't realize the extent of the fight for birth control until I had this little history lesson. In light of that, the recent controversy of birth control seems even more urgent and a fighting attempt to step in the wrong direction.

Porn Defends the Money Shot • DennIs Romero

Jenna Jameson is perhaps the ultimate porn success, a woman who never did the kind of “gonzo” films that give performers STDs, an entrepreneur who ultimately produced and distributed her own product. Sasha Gray, who quit the industry earlier this year, has crossed over into indie film (The Girlfriend Experience) and cable (Entourage). The new girls want to be Jenna and Sasha.

Condom or not to condom? Is it a privacy issue or a health issue? Good questions that might impact whether you'll be seeing a lot less bukakke sometime soon.

“[Initially] there were a lot of people enthusiastic in Washington that we found such a large number,” he recounts. “Then they look more closely at my findings. And they see, well, it wasn’t three hundred kids under the yoke of some pimp; in fact, it was half boys, and only ten percent of all of the kids were being pimped. And [then] it was a very different reception.

Later

Law-enforcement personnel, the kids say, are not always helpful: “One cop said, ‘You’re lucky I’m off duty, but you’re gonna suck my dick or I’ma take you in,’ ” a transgender youth stated. “This has happened to me about eight times.” “Police raped me a couple a times in Queens,” said a female who had worked as a prostitute for four years. “The last time that happened was a coupla months ago. But you don’t tell anybody; you just deal wit’ it.”

This was something for my inner sociology methodology geek, but I won't bore you. The big takeaway was that most child prostitutes are not being controlled by pimps and nearly half are boys,not girls. The sad part is seeing how people's view of children as inherently asexual and incapable of selling sex to make a living prevents them from helping these kids get on their feet.

The Original Blonde • Neal Gabler

Her originality was in her attitude—in the way she flaunted herself as her own aesthetic object. Her characters are not only outré, they cultivate that quality. They luxuriate in it. They are highly conscious of the effect it has, especially on men. In some ways it makes Harlow the first postmodernist sex symbol. One part of her, the mental part, was always measuring the other part of her, the physical part. No sex symbol has ever been as brainily self-aware.

We end on a pretty bubbly and happy note. Gabler gives us a short primer on Jean Harlow and all the platinum locked ladies that come after her.

Blurb: Lonely and sad knowing that her husband is cheating on her, Katie Gardiner seeks solace in the arms of her husband's handsome nephew, Jacob. During a weekend-long family reunion, they find ways to satisfy each other's needs as Jacob's tender passion awakens Katie's lust for life.

This is the first in a series of five stories that follow Katie as she breaks free of the restraints of her old life and finds passion and love in her new one.

Review:

Awakening is the story of a woman coming to terms with the slow destruction of her marriage. Katie Gardinier is a wife and mother who finds herself spending a weekend vacation with her husband's family. That would be all well and good if she didn't know that her husband, Michael was having an affair. She hides from the family festivities, but when her nephew Jacob comes to check on her the real fun starts.

She climbed out of bed and put on her bikini. It was the first time she’d worn a bikini in years.

Katie is not a spring chicken. She's had kids. She had baby weight, lost it, found it, and lost it again after working hard for years. She knows she's getting older and she doesn't look like she used to back in the day. Combine this with the impending destruction of her marriage, and she's got a lot on her mind. This is probably the most compelling thing about her and about Awakening in general. I'm sure that many readers can relate to Katie's feelings of insecurity and a lost youth.

He’d become withdrawn and tense over the past year or so, and never missed a chance to subtly criticize her weight, her fashion sense, her cooking, or her housekeeping.

Unfortunately the other characters don't get quite as much development as Katie. Michael, her philandering husband, never becomes more than the quote above. And Jacob, her hot nephew, is little more than a good kid with a hot bod. They are basically good cop, bad cop. Some people might not mind this Since Katie is pretty well developed, but for me they were a bit thin.

How long had it been since a first kiss?

But you can overlook some thinness in the characters for moments and lines like the one above. Isn't it great? It made me think back to my own first kisses, how they felt, the newness and uncertainty there. In only nine lines, Katrin Xavier got me to think about all of that.

The novel is littered with moments like this, making it almost an elegy to Katie's lost youth and failing marriage. We go inside the head of a woman who seems to have given up so much of herself to this marriage but realizes that she will have to start all over again very soon. Even though I'm not in Katie's situation the weight of her emotions hit me very strongly nearly every time they were brought up.

Take me. Take me back to when I was young. Take me back to college, to high school. Take me to a time before Michael.

Then there's this. It might be a pet peeve of mine, but it's kind of gross and creepy to me that Katie uses the youth of her new fling to make herself feel better. Couldn't she become comfortable in her own age and in her own skin? Does she have to sleep with a young kid to be valuable? Not my cup of tea.

She ran her hand down her chest, over her stomach and under her panties. Her sex still felt swollen and juicy. Not a dream. A crazy, ridiculous, wonderful reality.

The sex is sexy! This isn't rough, explicit, extreme sex. No BDSM or tentacles. Just good old wholesome(ish) sex between a guy and a gal. If you want to be titillated, but think a lot of erotica goes too far, then you'll like this.

In the end, this is a pretty good introduction to Katie and her life. Since it is only book one of the series, we're sure all the thin parts that we noticed will be filled in all of the way.

Details
: Plot :☆☆★★★
: Characters:☆☆★★★
: Warnings: The relationship is between a "not real aunt" and her nephew. Oh, and butt play happens.

About the Author:
About the Author: Katrin Xavier is a well travelled writer whose erotic tales explore the intersection of love, freedom and fulfillment. Awakening is her first story. Visit her at http://katrinxavier.wordpress.com/ or sign up for her mailing list at http://eepurl.com/v47oz to learn about new stories as they become available.

Blurb:
Samantha Kasimdzhanov is a talented but scatterbrained electrical engineer and recreational hardware hacker. Her house smells of solder and stray voltage.
Nina Bailey likes that smell. She also likes to be stripped, whipped, scared, bared, deprived, depraved and degraded.
Now, Nina has her very own "mad scientist," to create terrifying and inventive new punishments for her.
"Mittens" is a story about two women falling in love - one of whom is deliciously kinky, and the other delightfully mad.

Yes. That is a line in this story. In an instant messenger chat. Is that both hilarious and awkward? Yes. Does it get even geekier? Yes, oh goodness yes.

Mittens is the story of two best female pals who become, as pals are wont to do in erotica, a bit more than pals. The whole story begins when Nina drunkenly tells Samantha about her BDSM longings. Samantha, being a dork and a little slow on the uptake, starts methodically plotting how she can help her friend achieve her desires.

Of course, Nina is actually in love with Sam, but Sam doesn't know. It's not until a steamy, awkward, and kind of romantic instant messaging session (yes, the one quoted above) that they realize their love for one another. The real fun starts after that.

Lost in thought, she'd [Sam] been brushing her teeth for a full six minutes.

Let's get this straight, this isn't your typical erotica. There are moments like the above that are almost deliberately unsexy. Phoenix injects the whole story with moments of realism, silliness, and sometimes downright absurdity.

You could say that this is an erotic comedy, getting you all heated up and cracking up in equal measure. So this isn't for you if you want a story with beautiful perfect people having rockstar sex together. Sam is a martial arts trained science geek who could crush your neck with her thighs. Nina is a shy lesbian with blooming interests in BDSM and a fetish for Radioshack. These are not exactly your average sex starlets.

Mittens is for the geeks and the nerds. They gotta have sex too.

A lot of times, even most of the time I loved the quirkiness. The love story felt real, and sweet, and reminded me of my own experiences exposing kink for the first time. As a self professed geek I loved the DIY vibrator that Sam makes for Nina. And who doesn't love a cat named after the Higgs Boson?

But then there were times like this. Things just went over the top, and it started to feel like watching really awkward and embarrassing amateur porn. It was just a bit too intimate. Most of the time these moments were short, but sometimes it really felt like it went on forever.

Luckily, there is so much to like about this book that I ignored these scenes and soldiered on.

Nina growled, cords standing out on her neck, pajamas damp with sweat. In her mind's eye, Samantha held Nina's hair tightly in one hand, grinding her cunt into Nina's face - her labia enveloping Nina's nose, leaving slick trails between her eyes and over her lips. In Nina's fantasy, Samantha gripped her hair with both hands and used her, like Nina used the Special Toy right now.

One of those things is the hotness, of course. There were so many good quotes that I wanted to show you guys that it was hard to choose. There were sweet moments, romantic moments, thoughtful moments, and raunchy moments. Something for everyone.

Was it hot? Yes. Even through all the cute and the joking, Mittens can stand on its own when it comes to steaminess.

When I finished Mittens I felt a mixture of emotions. I was a little miffed that the mystery of the mittens is never explained. I was interested in what will happen to Sam and Nina from here on out. I was also just pleased to have read a good story.

Details
: Plot: ☆★★★★
: Characters: ☆★★★★
: Warnings: There is pee. There is also lots of saliva. You have been warned.

About the Author:
Hello! I write smut. Or rather, I write happy, sex-positive stories that aren't afraid of the occasional bit of blatant humanity. When was the last time you saw a character in a novel stop mid-sentence to sneeze? Or walk into a room, immediately forget what the hell she went in there for, and wander around for a minute trying to remember what she was doing? These little malfunctions are a part of being alive, and I think we need to see more of them in our fiction. I hope that you enjoy my stories about malfunctioning humans who fall in love and do really weird things to each other.

Rose never believed in love—her mother’s words in her head saw to that. Becks Harlow wanted Rose to protect her heart from the pain of love. When her mother is brutally murdered, Rose turns to the one man she thought could help, Detective Dave Mason. He was in charge of her mother’s case. Little did Rose know, Detective Mason would soon be in charge of her body, heart, and soul. She also suspects he killed her mother!

He stood over her, smiling, cock in hand.

Wow, Leanna Harrow sure nows how to start things off with a bang!

Killing the Desire begins moments after Rose's mom, Becks, is killed. We get to spend a few chilling moments with her murderer before meeting Rose and the rest of the characters. When Rose comes home to find her mother dead, she becomes determined to find the killer.

That's when she meets Detective Dave Mason, and falls head over heels for him. After a sad family reunion and joyous funeral party, Rose and Dave have a six hour sex-athon. Then Rose finds some evidence on her mother's laptop that pinpoints Dave as the potential murderer.

Is he the murderer? Well, I can't spoil the plot for you, now can I?

The book shocked me from the very first line, but I only wish that level of tension continued throughout the whole novel. Right after the opening scene we get a few chapters of backstory before the plot gets moving again. I get that Harrow wanted us to understand Rose's family, but it would have been better to get that as the plot continued rather than all at once.

Yes, Rose was a scrapper and you didn’t want to mess with her. 

Rose is a spunky character. She's not going to take any guff from anyone. While I liked a change from all of the weak and helpless female main characters I've seen in erotica recently, she's still another stereotype. Fans of anime and manga might recognize her as tsundere, or the tough chick with a heart of gold. There isn't much to her that wasn't predictable.

The same goes for the rest of the characters. If you love perfect and beautiful main characters, then Killing the Desire delivers. Rose is smoking hot, with a great ass and boobs. Dave is a big hunk of rippling six-packs in a police uniform. Sweet. But if you like a little more originality in your characters, you may be disappointed.

She could imagine him sucking her hard nipples, making her cum as he bit them one after the other and making her moan in ecstasy.

The sex didn't work for me. Many times It just seemed too unrealistic and rushed by too quickly. Rose was a cum machine, and even she lost count of how many times she orgasmed. It seems like she can cum at the drop of a hat. I wish I had that skill, but I am not so lucky. I do like that she takes the reins sometimes during sex, and doesn't just sit back and let things happen to her.

Sometimes the style in Killing the Desire could be a little rough. It could be repetitious, like in this quote. The dialogue often felt unbelievable particularly in the scenes with the police officers. But the scenes with Rose and her siblings were dead on in dialogue and feeling. I even found myself smiling and thinking about my siblings as I read these moments.

Harrow also falls into the old writer trap of telling when she should be showing. We get that the eyes are gorgeous. But show us how gorgeous they are, don't tell us.

Overall, Killing the Desire was an interesting ride. There are lots of twists and turns that I can't write about, and you'll just have to read the book to find out. Although there are certainly some areas for improvement, it can delight some lovers of mystery with a bit of sexiness thrown in.

Details

Plot : 3 of 5

Characters: 2 of 5

Warnings: None, squeaky clean. Except for the sex.

If you are an erotica author and would like to be part of this series, please check out this page.

About the Author:

Leanna Harrow grew up on the Central Coast of California where the beaches were pristine and the sunsets were spectacular. She attended the school of hard knocks as traditional schools had too many rules and regulations. She raised four children who turned out happy, healthy, productive members of society. Each of her children grew up to possess her independent spirit and headstrong ways but are all awesome people.

For all of her love, time, and devotion, Leanna’s children have repaid her with the ultimate gift of grandchildren. They are her favorite past time and at present, she has four of them. Leanna’s sure that the future holds more of them.

Her hobbies include cooking huge meals for her extended family, a good game of billiards every now and then, reading a good book—as well as writing one, writing poems that pop into her head at the most inopportune times, listening to music as many hours a day as possible and people watching, especially men!